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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

*An Afternoon Nap Improves Your Memory say Israeli Researchers*

This is nice news:

According to researchers at the University of Haifa, a 90-minute siestahelps speed up the process of long-term memory consolidation.

In a recent study, Prof. Avi Karni and Dr. Maria Korman of the Centerfor Brain and Behavior Research at the University of Haifa found thatan afternoon nap changes the course of consolidation in the brain. "Westill don't know the exact mechanism of the memory process that occursduring sleep, but the results of this research suggest the possibilitythat it is possible to speed up memory consolidation, and in thefuture, we may be able to do it artificially," said Karni.

Long-term memory is defined as a permanent memory that does notdisappear, or that disappears after many years. Long-term memory isdivided into two types---memories of "what" (for example: what happenedyesterday or what one remembers from an article one read yesterday) andmemories of "how to" (for example: how to read Hebrew, how to drive,play basketball or play the piano).

In the study, published in the scientific journal Nature Neuroscience,the researchers worked with two groups of participants. Group memberspracticed a repeated motor activity which consisted of bringing thethumb and a finger together in a specific sequence. The researchexamined the "how" aspect of memory in the participants' ability toperform the task quickly and in the correct sequence.

One of the groups was allowed to nap for an hour and a half afterlearning the task while the other group stayed awake. The researchers,who worked in cooperation with the Sleep Laboratory at the ShebaMedical Center and researchers from the Department of Psychology at theUniversity of Montreal, found that the group that slept in theafternoon showed a distinct improvement in their task performance by thatevening, as opposed to the group that stayed awake, which didn't exhibit anyimprovement.

Following an entire night's sleep, both groups exhibited the same skilllevel.

There's more to this story, but according to the ISRAELI21c sources "ifyou need to memorize something quickly or you've got lots of differentactivities to learn how to do at one go, better find some time for anafternoon snooze."